Microsoft has long since abandoned their attempts to bring Halo 3’s multiplayer experience to PC via the Russian only free to play title Halo Online. Although almost two years have passed since the game’s official closure in August of 2016, a dedicated group of community developers have kept the game going with semi-regular updates thanks to a leaked Russian build of the Halo Online client.
Here are just some of the improvements and highlights that the Eldewrito team is promising for the upcoming 0.6 release:
The original Halo experience brought to PC (for free).
Dual wielding and deployable equipment implemented (from Halo 3).
Improvements to the Forge Mode which include new material types, new tools and new items.
Advanced map control: Weather, skyboxes and lighting.
Inclusion of an auto-updater to keep everyone on the same version. (not in the trailer but confirmed on the game’s reddit.)
I’ve had a lot of fun with Halo Online in the past couple of years and have blogged about it a handful of times. Version 0.6 is a longtime coming and brings a lot of requested features that fans have been hoping for – dual wielding and workable equipment. It is even more impressive when you consider that these passionate community devs don’t have access to the game’s source code or development tools. All of these improvements and features have been fixed or implemented with only an outdated leaked build of the client.
Once the full patch notes and download are made available on April 20th I’ll be sure to make another post.
Destiny 2 developer Bungie canceled today’s promotional live stream for the upcoming Curse of Osiris DLC and instead addressed several of the concerns that the community has had. There’s been a lot of activity both within the Destiny 2 subreddit /r/DestinyTheGame and within the gaming enthusiast press surrounding the tacit XP throttling that Bungie was doing under the hood; as well as the subsequent doubling of XP required to level up once throttling was removed.
Regarding Experience Points
The devs admit that the newly introduced 160,000 XP requirement per level is too high to grind some activities and that Bungie are collecting data so that they can make further adjustments faster. More communication with the community about the inner workings of experience point in the future was also promised towards the end of the XP Points section of today’s blog post.
“We were able to disable the system with a server-side change, but a new solution is now needed to rebalance XP in Destiny 2. We have begun that work, and will continue to provide updates to you about timelines and specifics…We already see that the newly adjusted 160K XP per level value means that leveling is too slow for some activities, and we have begun the process of collecting data and recalibrating XP earn rates to improve them as quickly as possible.”
New Rarity For Weapons: Masterwork
A brand-new tier of rarity for weapons beyond Legendary and Exotic is being added to Destiny 2 with the December patches, called Masterwork. This new class of rarity will have kill tracking as a baseline feature and will generate orbs for allies and the player upon scoring kills. Destiny 1 veterans asking for the return of randomized bonuses will be happy to learn that re-rollable Masterwork Traits are part of this new rarity. Unlike the traits in Destiny 1, Guardians won’t be fully healed or receive massive amounts of sniping damage like some D1 weapons provided but they should help differentiate the Masterwork weapons from regular legendaries.
Here are some of the features of Masterwork weapons as provided by Bungie’s blog:
Masterworks will have a few advantages over the baseline Legendary weapon:
Track and display the number of kills with that weapon (with choice between total count or Crucible-only count)
Generate orbs for you and your allies on multi-kills
Add weapon stat bonuses that are selected randomly from a small pool and are re-rollable
Masterworks drop from any source of Legendary weapons for characters above 250 Power
Unwanted Masterworks can be dismantled into materials that can upgrade an existing Legendary Weapon into a Masterwork
Raid and Trials of the Nine Weapons will have a very high chance to be Masterworks
We have future plans to extend Masterworks to other gear and expose your kill counts in more places (e.g. Crucible kill screen)
Vendor Changes
Quality of life updates for Destiny 2’s various vendors is another big focus with the December 5 and December 12th patches. Once completing the game Guardians will be able to purchase exotic quality engrams for legendary shards. Common tokens that drop in all of the major hub worlds are having their drop rates increased by 100%. Also of note are changes to Xur – he will now decrypt exotic level engrams and once per week players can purchase a single Fated Engram that guarantees them an exotic weapon or piece of gear they don’t already own. Also returning from Destiny 1 is the “Three of Coins”, which has been simplified from its initial incarnation. The three of coins will boost the chances of finding an exotic for 4 hours and can be purchased from Xur during weekends.
For players chasing a world Legendary or looking for Masterworks, Master Rahool will sell some of his rumored hoard of Legendary Engrams for Legendary Shards
Common quality Destination Resource Tokens will have their drop rates increased to 100%, and values per Token increased as well (by 50% for common quality Tokens and 250% for rare quality Tokens)
For players wanting to clear some Mod inventory space, Rare quality Mods will dismantle into Gunsmith Materials and have a chance to produce Legendary quality Mod Components
Every week, you’ll be able to acquire one of the new Fated Engrams using Legendary Shards from Xur that will decrypt as Exotics that aren’t already in your collection
A simpler Three of Coins that boosts Exotic drop rates from any source for 4 hours
So Much More
I highly recommend that any interested guardians (or potential guardians) head on over to Bungie’s recently released blog post and read all of the changes coming to the game themselves. Some of them are minor, like being able to dismantle mods at the gunsmith. Other changes, like the introduction of Masterwork weapons and changes to tokens, are going to have a much larger impact on Destiny 2’s end game.
Is all of this enough to sate the hardcore fans who want D2 to be their forever game? I’m not sure. What I do know is that aside from the December 5th and 12th quality of life updates, Destiny 2 is also going to get a whole lot of new content with the release of Curse of Osiris on 5th alongside the first patch.
Funcom has been in the news recently thanks to the success of Conan Exhiles and how that titles literally saved them from bankruptcy but the developer / publisher isn’t busy enjoying “what’s best in life” because they’ve massively upset the hardcore player base of The Secret World by announcing a complete server wipe & genre change for the 5 year old MMO.
Early yesterday morning Funcom released a press release, teaser trailer and a series of developer blogs outlining that the MMO version of The Secret World (herein referred to as The Secret World Classic to avoid confusion between versions) would be no longer supported or sold as they moved the game in a different direction.
Here is how Funcom’s press release described the upcoming reluanch:
“The Secret World will be relaunched this spring as Secret World Legends, a shared-world action RPG with completely revamped combat, a newly designed progression system, and updated visuals. The game’s full collection of missions and mysteries will be free to play, with over 100 hours of mature storytelling and surprises.”
Rebranded as The Secret World Legends, this new title will use the existing assets and plot line of the 2012 title but will be more focused on Action RPG elements rather than the traditional World of Warcraft-esque MMO trappings that That Secret World Classic embraced. Players who login into The Secret World Legacy upon its release will notice less of a social emphasis with less players in the game world when compared to The Secret World Classic. Funcom also stated
This shift in direction means that also The Secret World Classic is no longer available for sale & will receive no further updates – although servers will remain online – so whomever owns the game and plays now can continue to do so but TSW Classic literally will never have a new player set foot in its world. Also TWS Classic’s official Steam Discussions group has been wiped clean and existing player characters will not transfer over to Legends when it launches sometime this quarter.
Reaction to the shift to Free to Play Action RPG from the model of Buy Once Play Forever MMORPG and the accompany character erasure has predictably left the community fuming. Here is just a small taste of the fan reaction from folks who are about to lose 100s of hours of commitment:
PicklyVin from Reddit:
“Started playing again a few weeks ago after a year and a half or so of not playing, and was loving the game again (redid a bunch of builds, tried out PvP for the first time, spent a bit of funcom points, adjusted some gear), was looking forward to new players/new mechanics to do dungeons/more PvP/etc. Very, very frustrating to hear today that the whole thing is out the window.”
Planktonic_Larvas from Reddit:
“That name is %&$#* terrible..
As others have said fragmenting the already small userbase really isn’t good, I’ll be downloading it and playing but I think it’s gonna have to have something really special for me to give up all the work and money I’ve put into my characters through achievements and clothing..”
LemonWarlord from Reddit:
“Other games like Anarchy Online are still on 15+ years later. The old game is officially put on life support. You can’t buy the old game anymore, so the only direction the population can go is down.
If this weekend’s open beta for the latest doom just isn’t scratching that itch for demon infested combat on Mars then perhaps Doom III: Redux is for you. Developed by Clear_Sterlock originally for just for his own enjoyment, Doom III: Redux adds a number of enhancements including cleaned up/higher resolution textures, audio fixes for the game’s audio-logs to make them sound more authentic and even the inclusion of cut content from the 2002 E3 leak!
[youtube id=”Ic6p3HDwLD8″]
Certainly this was no small undertaking especially for one person. Describing the current state of the mod, Clear_Sterlock wrote a rather long blog post about the current available build – 0.95b and what lies ahead for the project as he approaches the huge milestone of 1.0
“First, I’m going to upload the version 0.95b of the mod on april 15. The mod is perfectly stable and polished in it’s current state but while a few friends have already tested it, I know from experience that a first release never comes without its share of unexpected bugs. Therefore, that version of the mod will be online for a few weeks and will eventually be replaced by the 1.0 version, which will add some features that I won’t be able to finish right now and also fix any potential issues.”
If you own the original Doom III through Steam or physical DVD / CD I highly recommend you check out Doom III: Redux on ModDB. Clear_Sterlock’s work is damn impressive.
Our site is the primary place for us to post new content but if you’ve ever wanted to comment on our articles, pitch story ideas or interact with our editors that has been a little difficult up until now. Aside from dropping us an email we haven’t really provided a solid way for the community to chat with us outside of our Twitter and Facebook Page. Now you can join in on the conversation on our official Sub Reddit where anyone who visits our site can leave us feedback.
The development team behind Diablo 3 has released behind-the-scenes details of designing the game’s Legendary items in a blog post today, looking to tap the collective mind of the community that so adores the series.Read More
